English Reductions [Advance Pronunciation Practice]

Hello, hello.

Welcome to today's live English lesson, here on the Speak English With Vanessa YouTube

channel.

I'm so glad that you're here to learn English, to improve, to participate and to enjoy it.

That's the goal.

Today we're gonna be talking about an important pronunciation point and this is useful for

your own pronunciation, but it's also useful for understanding other people, for understanding

native speakers, for understanding movies and TV shows.

So pronunciation overall, is useful for your own speaking, but it's very important for

communication.

So today we're gonna talk about the concept of reductions.

Reductions comes from the word reduce, reduce means to make something smaller or shorter

and that's what native speakers love to do.

Whenever we speak, we're always making our words shorter and quicker, maybe lazier.

An easier way of talking, so that we can say more in a short amount of time.

So that's what we're gonna talk about today.

If you're joining me live for this lesson, welcome.

If you're watching the replay, excellent.

You can benefit a lot from this.

If you're new here, I'm Vanessa, welcome.

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We have some members who are here with us live already.

Hello Tra from Vietnam, wonderful, from Paraguay, Iran, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Palestine,

Turkey.

Thanks so much for joining me.

We have a wonderful international community and that's the cool thing about language,

about English, is that it combines us and connects us and unifies us.

It doesn't matter, our background or native language, we can all have a common passion,

communicating in English.

So today we're gonna get started with one of the most common reductions, today we're

gonna talk about three.

The first two are more simple and the third one is gonna be something that we use more

often in slang or in casual speech.

So it's not something that you write, but it's something that we use when we speak a

lot.

My first question for you is, today after you watch this lesson, what are you gonna

do?

I said that pretty quickly, let me say that one more time.

After this live lesson, after you watch this lesson, what are you gonna do today?

I said, what are you gonna do today?

Gonna ... is there an English word that's gonna?

No, this is our first reduction.

So when you type, when you write your answer in the chat box, in the comments, you can

use a shortened version, I'm gonna write a version on my clipboard here, so that you

can see.

But typically when you're writing something professional, you need to write the full two

words, in this case, you need to write the full word.

But for speaking, that's why it's a reduction.

So my question is, what are you gonna do after this lesson?

Now here we have our main word that we're talking about, gonna.

What do you think gonna means?

What does gonna mean?

It's gonna mean two words and their quite important.

Gonna is going to.

You might notice this as a version of the future tense.

When we talk about the future, you could say will, I will go swimming today.

I am gonna go swimming today.

So it's a way to talk about the future, but if you wanna say it fast, like a native speaker,

we always say gonna.

Oh, I'm gonna go to the store.

I'm gonna go to work.

I'm gonna sleep because it's really late at night in my country.

What are you gonna do?

Junie here, who is live with me, says, “I'm gonna write a résumé.”

Sioshi says, “I'm gonna drink a glass of wine and go straight to bed.”

Beautiful, so here we're talking about things that are gonna happen, things that will happen

in the future.

I wanna note that when we use gonna, when we use these reductions, what happened to

this word?

What happened to, to?

Where did to go?

A lot of my English students sometimes add to when they're practicing reductions for

the first time.

So I want to make sure you don't make this mistake.

A lot of my English students might say, “I'm gonna to go swimming.

I'm gonna to drink a glass of wine.”

Well, that's what this A is.

The to has turned into this A, has changed and become this A here.

So we don't need to add to because it's already combined in this reduction.

So make sure that when you're using a reduction, this T, T, to sound is gone.

It's already combined, so you don't need to repeat it.

Let me read a couple more of your wonderful sentences.

What are you gonna do after this live lesson?

“I'm gonna go shopping.”

Resa says, “I'm gonna read papers for my thesis.”

Oh, lots of studying.

“I'm gonna go to the gym.”

Great Tamara, I hope that it's useful for you.

Ameer says, "I'm gonna replay this lesson again."

Excellent idea, take some notes, writes some sentences down, repeat them out loud, repeat

them with me.

I'm gonna, what if we wanna use this in a negative way?

We're gonna talk about each of these reductions in a positive and a negative way.

How could we change an answer to be negative?

Let me write a sample for myself and if you wanna write also a negative sentence.

What are you not gonna do after this lesson?

What are you not gonna do?

For me, it's the morning, so I could say, "I'm not gonna go back to sleep."

I'm already awake, it's the morning, I'm probably gonna eat breakfast, I'm gonna take a walk,

start my day.

So for me, we can add this negative word, not.

I'm not gonna, right before gonna.

I'm not gonna go back to sleep.

It's 09:00am, it's not really a good time to go back to sleep.

Maybe 09:00pm would be a good time.

Great, thank you so much for all of your wonderful sentences.

Maisaki says, “I'm not gonna have dinner.”

Oh, maybe for you, dinner is finished or maybe you're not hungry.

“I'm not gonna play a video game."

Thank you Bach, interesting sentence.

"I'm not gonna watch TV."

Maybe you're gonna do something else, like study English.

Not gonna, make sure we're using that negative version right in front of this.

As I mentioned before, just a quick little review.

Don't write G-O-N-N-A, don't write gonna in your professional in emails.

This is only for conversation or when you're writing with your friends or when you're writing

with a family member.

Whenever I write an email to a family member or someone I know, it's not a big deal to

use gonna, G-O-N-N-A, instead of going to because this is the proper way to use it.

But this is gonna be our casual way, so make sure that you use this in conversations.

Business conversations, no problem, you can use this in any conversation, business conversations,

with your friends, with your grandma, with your cat, with anyone.

But we don't write this in business situations, so it's pretty flexible, except for writing.

You need to make sure that you write the full version, if you're writing something professional.

Let's go to the second reduction, the second reduction ... I have a question for you, another

question.

Tell me, where do you wanna visit in the world?

Let's imagine someone gives you $100,000 and you can visit any country, where do you wanna

visit?

Maybe you could visit that country, especially with that large amount of money.

Maybe you could visit that country for a month or you could go to really amazing restaurants

every day.

But where do you wanna visit in the world?

For me that's a really difficult question because my list is really long and it's always

growing, but the good news is, nowadays it's pretty convenient to travel, we just need

some extra money and some free time to be able to go around the world.

So I'm gonna write my question here, where do you wanna go in the world?

You have a lot of choices, there's a lot of amazing places.

Here is our key reduction, what do you think that this reduction means?

Wanna, wanna, we've got a lot of great sentences here.

Ola says, "I wanna go to the US."

Sankbo says, "I wanna visit Hawaii."

Khan says, "I wanna visit Vanessa."

Well, my city is quite nice.

It's not exactly New York, but it's real America.

Myles says, "I wanna visit Korea."

Oh, a lot of people say Hawaii, interesting.

Hector says, "I wanna visit Mars."

Yes, do it.

I'm really curious what Mars is like.

At least you can visit outer space, I think it would be amazing to see the earth from

space, which means you don't have to go too far away.

But you still have to get in a rocket and experience strange sensations, but that would

be amazing.

I think I wanna see earth from space.

Maybe that's my answer here because there's too many countries on my list.

Who knows, what is wanna?

What does wanna mean?

Wanna stands for two words, just like gonna, we've combined want to, want to.

So what happened to, to?

Where is to in this reduction?

Well, same as gonna, it has become this uh sound at the end.

This shwa uh sound, so we don't need to add to.

No, don't add to afterwards because we already have to.

So a lot of you are already writing beautiful sentences using wanna correctly.

Make sure we don't have to and just like gonna, we're gonna use this in every kind of conversation

and in more casual writing, not professional writing.

But you can use this spoken, at work, you can use this in your presentations, but don't

write this at work.

I recommend writing want to, when you're writing more professional style emails or presentations.

Let's take a look at some of your wonderful want to, wanna sentences.

"I wanna visit Canada again."

Great, "I wanna learn how to write correctly."

Oh beautiful, "I wanna visit your hometown."

Oh well, it's a lovely place.

I hope that you get a chance to do it someday.

Wanna, something that you wanna do, wanna, wanna.

And if you've noticed so far, we always have a verb afterwards.

It was the same with gonna, gonna plus a verb and this is gonna be typical.

We're always gonna have a verb afterwards.

Let's take a look at the third reduction.

Now the third reduction is gonna be a little bit different, gonna be.

If you notice, I use these reductions all the time.

Gonna, wanna and the third reduction, can you guess what we're gonna talk about today?

The third one is a little more casual.

So for this one, we've got a couple of different options.

I wanna ask you a question and I wanna see how you answer it, I'll give you a little

hint too.

My question is, what do you have to do to improve your English skills?

What do you have to do to improve your English skills?

There are two reductions that we can talk about for this question.

The first one is a little more clear and straightforward because I already used that word in this question.

I already used have to, have to.

So you could say something like, "Oh, I hafta practice every day."

This is our first reduction and it's the most clear because it's pretty much the same thing

that we talked about before.

We have a and to, but I really wanna focus on a second reduction that has a similar meaning,

but it's not in this question.

Typically, the second reduction that I wanna talk about here, is used in statements.

We don't often use it in a question, can any of you guess what we're gonna talk about for

the second reduction that has a similar meaning, but it's more casual, something that we use

in statements.

I'll give you a hint, it starts with a G, starts with a G. What do you think?

Well, let me write a sample sentence and see if you can guess what this means, what this

stands for.

I gotta practice every day.

Oh, what do you think that this reduction means?

It actually stands for three words, so previously we talked about reductions that have two words,

going to, want to, have to.

But this one means the same thing as have to, it's a necessity.

I have to practice every day, I need to practice every day.

But with this reduction it's actually three that we're combining.

Can anyone guess?

A lot of you said got to, Khan has the correct answer.

Khan says, "Have got to."

Oh, lovely, lovely guess.

So here we have, have got to, where is have?

Because this follows a similar pattern as the other reductions.

Got to, to becomes the A, and then we've got, got.

Pretty clear compared to other ones, but what about have?

What happened to have?

Well, as I mentioned, when native speakers are talking quickly, we often like to cut

out things, throw them away, reduce them, speak quickly.

That's exactly what's happening, so in this situation, have is gone.

Is this possible?

Can we actually cut out important verbs?

Well, yeah, we can.

In this situation it's understood, it's understood and the word understood means that it's implied

or understood.

This is a challenging concept in English because it means that in the sentence, you're not

gonna hear and you're not gonna see each word.

One word or some words are completely cut out of the sentence, but native speakers already

understand that it should be in that sentence.

So they already understand that it needs to be there, but when we speak or in some situations,

when you write, it's cut out.

So here is the perfect example of implied.

Something that's implied because I could say, "I have got to practice every day."

Or, "I've gotta practice every day."

You can say that, no problem.

We can add, I've, I've gotta practice every day.

This is great, but you're gonna hear a lot of native speakers cut that out.

I gotta practice, I gotta, I gotta practice every day.

So for you, if you feel comfortable saying, "Today, oh, I gotta pick up my sister from

school and then I gotta go to the grocery store and then I gotta think about what to

eat for dinner and prepare for my family."

If you feel comfortable using gotta by itself, excellent.

Go ahead, it just is the same as hafta, but it's really strong.

So if you feel comfortable using this, excellent.

If you're uncertain, I recommend listening and watching to a lot of material.

A lot of material that is from native speakers because you're gonna hear them use this all

the time.

Native speakers use, "I gotta go."

It means, I have to go, I have got to go, I need to go, I need to leave, see you later

everyone.

This is really common and the more that you hear it, the more you're gonna feel comfortable

understanding it.

The first step is to understand it when native speakers use it.

Second step is to use it yourself and that's what you're doing.

Let's take a look at some of your sentences.

What do you have to do to improve your English?

I gotta ... Hibo says, "I gotta practice English."

Jenny says, "I gotta prepare my presentation in English."

Oh, Marcella says, "I gotta practice English with Vanessa."

I hope it's useful for you.

Gabriela says, "I'm gonna see an old friend and I wanna buy him a gift, so I gotta find

something pretty special or I have to find something pretty special."

Beautiful sentence, using all of these reductions.

Lovely, lovely, so make sure that when you use gotta, it's the same as hafta, I hafta

do something, it's a necessity.

Something, maybe it's not so fun all the time, but it's important for your life, it's a necessity.

All right, let's take a look at a final sentence that we can say altogether, if you are still

watching this live or in the replay, congratulations.

I hope that you've learned a lot, let's combine our knowledge and use these three reductions

to make a wonderful sentence, to say altogether and practice pronunciation, practice memory

and repetition.

And I'm gonna say the sentence and I want you to write it down or write it in your notebook

or just say it out loud.

We're gonna practice this together, so it's kind of a mini listening practice.

Try to hear exactly what I'm saying, are you ready?

Let's say this English sentence together, what should we say?

How about ... oh, I got a good one.

I gotta good one, I gotta ... gotta good one.

We could say, "I wanna improve my English, so I'm gonna study and I gotta do it now."

Can you write this full sentence?

I wanna improve my English, so I gotta study and I'm gonna do it now.

I wanna improve my English, so I gotta study every day and I'm gonna do it now.

Great, maybe earlier I switched those, it's okay.

I wanna improve my English, so I'm gonna study and I gotta do it now, beautiful.

Let's say this slowly.

Prepare our pronunciation, prepare your mouth muscles and I hope that this quick repetition

will help you to say it correctly and also start to feel more comfortable.

All right, let's say I wanna improve my English, so I gotta study and I'm gonna do it now.

Let's say it quickly, I wanna improve my English, so I've gotta study and I'm gonna do it now.

We could ... I've gotta study or we can cut it out.

I wanna improve my English, so I gotta study and I'm gonna do it now.

In fact, you are doing it now because you're watching this lesson and participating.

All around the world, if you are in Vietnam, Brazil, Egypt, Russia, France, Chile, wherever

you are, I hope that you're saying this sentence out loud with me.

I wanna improve my English, so I'm gonna study and I gotta do it now.

Repeat this and enjoy this concept because native speakers use it all the time.

Thanks so much for learning with me today and if you enjoyed this live lesson, feel

free to come again for the next live lesson, which will be Tuesday and Thursday at 09:00am

Eastern time, that's the New York time zone.

I hope you can come again, next time will be on Tuesday.

We'll be talking about another important concept that I hope you can learn a lot from and if

you wanna continue learning with me right now and expand your English knowledge, if

you wanna improve, you're gonna do it, I know you can and I recommend reading my free ebook,

called Five Steps To Becoming A Confident English Speaker.

This free ebook has helped thousands of English learners to know the next step because there's

a lot of places, a lot of paths you can take to improve your English, but that can be kind

of overwhelming.

It's great to have choices, but sometimes too many choices is overwhelming.

Wow, that's a really loud motorcycle, I hope it wasn't too loud for you.

So if you would like to continue to learn English with me, I recommend reading my free

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I'll put a link in the description and here on the screen at the end of the lesson.

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You're gonna improve, you gotta do it, I hope you wanna do it.

Let's learn together.

Thanks so much for joining me and I'll see you the next time.

Bye everyone, talk to you later.